Rain on the roof and prices through the roof!

For the most part (but agonisingly not quite for all) our hopes for good summer and autumn rains have been rewarded providing much-needed relief to many.
The photo above, showing the Dawson River flooding over the Roma Rd just outside of Taroom, was taken by Geoff whilst visiting clients up there in late February.
Excellent rainfall and soil moisture levels across northern New South Wales, the Darling Downs and Central Queensland have led to spirited activity in the cattle (and sheep) re-stocker market with a massive spike in prices. Very recent rain over southern NSW, who have missed out up to now, will add to this.
This will only be sustained however if the majority of regions get good follow up rains throughout the autumn and winter and the ‘over the hooks prices’ can keep up with the re-stocker prices. So far they have with Swine fever and a low $AUD fueling Chinese beef imports, coupled with a dramatic pull back on female slaughter rates. The impact of the Coronavirus pandemic requires careful monitoring but could only be viewed as a negative at this stage via a severe impact on international supply chains.
Read on for more on the Corona virus pandemic.
In this edition of our newsletter, we announce and show the winning entries of our Photo competition. The photos were so numerous and of high artistic merit that we even had to enlist the services of Murray’s daughter-in-law Kate Bird (Masters of Fine Arts and Curatorship and currently a Curator at the Victorian State Library). Even with such expert opinion, there was healthy debate!

Murray Grant and the team at Chemvet

CHEMVET your trusted supplier of the following economical and high quality products

Photo competition

A BIG thanks to everybody that sent us their amazing photos after our last newsletter. We were blown away with how beautiful they all were! It was extremely hard to choose our winners. Congratulations to Sue Zefara (QLD) and Ben Mar-shall (TAS) as well as an honourable mention to Casey Dobson (VIC) and Sue Marshall.

From Left: Ben Marshall (TAS) and Casey Dobson (VIC)

We hope you continue to send us your favourite photos as we’re going to start “Farm Photo Friday” on our Facebook page so everybody can see these candid moments (if you’re on Facebook make sure you’re following us). Every newsletter we search through photos online to find an image for our front cover – when all we needed to do was ask our talented clients whose photos are a true representation of Australian rural life.

The Corona Virus Pandemic

‘Pandemic’ is an outbreak of disease that attacks many peoples at the same time throughout the world.
With regards to the Corona Virus it appears to us that ‘the Genie is well and truly out of the bottle’ and a Pandemic is inevitable
At Chemvet we have thought hard about how it may impact our business. Hopefully we have minimized the impact on our upstream supply of Active Material for our products by placing larger and earlier than normal orders with our overseas suppliers, and have sought alternative supply where there has been a problem.

Come winter however there is a major chance that a large number of the Australian workforce will become sick.
This severe reduction in the workforce could have an impact on:

The timely manufacture of our products which are all manufactured in Australia (which we have tried to mitigate by bringing forward, wherever we can, our manufacturing orders).
The delivery of our products to you our clients. For instance what happens if Australia Post and TNT are down to a 50% workforce? Delivery times could lengthen dramatically.

Therefore we urge all our clients to think about the products that you may require April through to June and place your orders as early as you can. Of course this also applies to tags as printing and delivery times could be impacted for the above reasons.

The two A’s for effective fluke treatment

**$165 +GST**
Offer until 31st May 2020. Valid for full price purchases only.

The two months for the most effective fluke treatment are the two “A’s” – April and August. This is because these are the two months when in most areas the cattle have picked up what fluke they are going to pick up and the majority of these fluke are in the adult stage which is the best time to hit them for a six before they drag the beast down in condition.
Also it is important not to fall into the trap in believing that fluke are only an issue in wet years and not so in dry years. In fact a long period of dry conditions are often worse for fluke infestation in cattle as this is the time that cattle are really poking into the soaky (‘flukey’) areas chasing whatever green pick they can find.

Treat cattle in fluke prone areas with Vetmec F this month for ‘top of the line’ fluke, worm and lice control.

2 x tag offers are back!

Order over 250 Zeetag NLIS Tags and receive a free no tear tagger (worth $42).

Ends 31 May 2020.
Order over 350 Zeetag NLIS Tags (or 300 NLIS plus 300 Two Pc Management Tags) and receive a free no tear tagger (worth $42) PLUS a handy Toolbox! Ends 31 May 2020.

Tag News

Queenslanders NLIS tags

Message from Diana’s desk – Big Shout out to our Queenslanders ordering NLIS Tags! Since a few months ago the Queensland Department of Agriculture & Fisheries (DAF) have dictated that Queensland farmers must update the information on their Registered Biosecurity Entity (RBE) Record and of course pay a fee for the privilege of doing so.
Unfortunately, they won’t provide an ‘Authority to Purchase NLIS tags’ until your details have been updated and the fee paid. You can call the DAF on 13 25 23 to do this if you haven’t already done so.
When a Queensland producer calls and orders NLIS tags from us:
We contact DAF to make sure we get all the paperwork and if you haven’t already done so ask, on your behalf, for an ‘Authority to Purchase NLIS Tags’ – the tags can’t be printed without this form.

• If you have updated your RBE information then the tags are on their way.
• If you haven’t updated your RBE information we are unable to process the order and have to ask you to update your RBE and pay the fee. Until we get confirmation from DAF that you have done so we can’t place the order for your tags

So if you are a Queenslander and need NLIS tags sometime soon then please make sure that you have updated your RBE with DAF and paid the fee.
Orders from TAS, NSW, SA and WA you don’t need to worry as we can simply place the order immediately.

Innovation

This year I was fortunate enough to volunteer at and attend evokeAG, run by AgriFutures (previously the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation –RIRDC).
The main themes surrounding the two day event were sustainability, provenance and collaboration to bring about change. Some of the standout panel discussions included; “Traditional protein vs new protein: How to make room on the plate for both”, “Are we treating soil like dirt?”, and “Reading the fine print: Traceability in the supply chain.”

There was also a lot of talk around precision livestock and how we can better use technology to drive growth in our extensive sheep and beef systems. There seems to be an abundance of data that is collected every year that isn’t being used effectively by producers. With analysis and appropriate management, the data would almost certainly lead to higher profits.
Personally, I found this extremely interesting as it’s something we’ve started thinking about on the farm at home. For instance, for biosecurity and traceability we have compulsory electronic tagging. What could we be doing at a grassroots level with all the data that this already generates, or could easily generate, to improve productivity and profitability?
It was a sell-out event and there were people from agricultural industries around the world. It provided an opportunity for farmers to connect with other farmers and start-up companies, while the exciting atmosphere got people inspired to be a part of the new brand of agriculture that’s upon us.